Landfall

The Stars Like Sand

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry is a well-reviewed 2014 anthology of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror poetry that I co-edited with P. S. Cottier. You can buy The Stars Like Sand from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

Men Briefly Explained

Men Briefly Explained is my 2011 poetry collection that explains men, briefly. You can buy Men Briefly Explained from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle ebook.

My Library from LibraryThing

About Me

I'm a writer, editor, anthologist, and now blogger who was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England and moved to New Zealand with my family when I was 2.
I grew up on the West Coast and in Southland, then went to Dunedin to go to Otago University before moving to Wellington in 1993. I'm married with one child.
I'm juggling the writing of poetry, short fiction and novels, working part time, trying to be a good husband and father, and working hard to get New Zealand to take effective action on climate change - not to mention all the other problems the world faces. Life is busy!

Tim says: I will be posting my interview with Tracie McBride, a New Zealand poet and short story writer who's now living in Australia, later this week. I asked her to send me a selection of her poems from which I could choose one as a Tuesday Poem, and although I liked all the poems she sent, I couldn't go past this one, which is a particular favourite of mine from the Voyagers anthology. Science fiction poetry doesn't have to be serious!

Tracie has a lot of interesting things to say in our interview: about being a 'Kozzie' - a Kiwi-Aussie; about her writing; and about the changing face of publishing - she's also the vice-president of Dark Continents Publishing. Look out for our interview later this week.

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

You can find out lots more info on the Tales For Canterbury Blog, but if you are wondering whether to buy or pre-order one, I suggest you ask yourself the following questions:

Do I want to support Christchurch residents in the wake of the February earthquake?

Do I like reading work by any of these writers? (I won't reproduce the full list here, but it includes names such as Neil Gaiman, Janis Freegard, Gwyneth Jones, Jay Lake, Helen Lowe, Tina Makereti, Juliet Marillier, Jeff Vandermeer, Mary Victoria, and Sean Williams, and there are 34 stories in all. One is by me.)

Can I afford NZ $12 for the ebook edition or NZ $24.95 for the paperback edition?

If the answer to the third question, and at least one of the first two questions, is "yes", then I think you are building a strong case for buying a copy!

23 May 2011

Fifth tackle, and they’re kicking
when the last trump sounds.
The chosen players rise
but fail to catch the ball
as it spirals sinfully to ground.

It’s six a side in heaven,
seven left behind. No tackler,
no first marker. The halfback,
that cocky little rooster,
grabs the ball and scoots away.

No fullback, either. He's
showing a clean pair of heels
diving beneath the crossbar
and taking the conversion
as the first drops of blood touch the crowd.

Tim says: In the wake of last weekend's seemingly erroneous prophecy, I thought it was time to post this poem, which appeared in my first collection, Boat People. In case the number of players involved puzzles you, I should point out that the game in question is rugby league (13 a side).

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

It's a storm in a teacup, perhaps: one more skirmish in the long war to establish, or alternatively to deny, speculative fiction's place at the literary table. But it got me thinking: what does it mean to produce a better sentence? What makes one sentence better than another? Is it the beauty of the words, or the use of metaphor or simile or imagery, or the function the sentence plays in telling the story, or a combination of all of these?

As I understand it, Cheryl's perception - and it's mine, too - is that, in genre fiction, the merit of a sentence lies chiefly in its contribution to telling the story, while in literary fiction, the merit of a sentence lies chiefly in the beauty of its expression. I'm just not sure that a beautiful but non-functional sentence is "better" than a sentence that is less elegant but contributes to advancing the story.

What do you think? What makes a sentence "better"? And, if that is a meaningful question, then...

At the time "That's Far Enough" was written, the trajectories of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft leaving the solar system and heading into interstellar space appeared to show that they were being acted on by a forced additional to gravity, which was gradually slowing them down. However, recent research may have accounted for the "Pioneer Anomaly".

You can read all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog - the featured poem is on the centre of the page, and the week's other poems are linked from the right-hand column.

12 May 2011

This is an open call to New Zealand and Australian poets for submissions to Issue 2 of "Eye to the Telescope", the Science Fiction Poetry Association's new online journal, to be edited by Tim Jones and published in July/August 2011. The focus of Issue 2 is on New Zealand and Australian speculative poetry. Issue 2 will include a maximum of 20 poems.

* Submission guidelines: including submission format, payments and rights, and who can submit

* What is speculative poetry?

* What is the Science Fiction Poetry Association?

* Who is Tim Jones?

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Because this is an open call for submissions to all New Zealand and Australian poets, and time is tight, submissions do that not follow the guidelines below are unlikely be successful. In particular, attachments will not be read.

Submission format

1) Send no more than three poems in an email message to eott2subs@gmail.com with the subject line "Submission to EOTT 2".

If you include more than three poems in your message, I will only read the first three. You are welcome to send fewer than three poems.

2) Include your poem(s) in the body of your email message. Do not send attachments. Attachments will be not be read.

If your poem has special formatting requirements which cannot be reproduced in the body of an email, please send it anyway within the body of your email, but include a note about the formatting requirements. If necessary, I will get back to you to request a copy in the correct format.

3) Poems of longer than 75 lines will not be considered. There is no lower limit on lines, so you are welcome to send haiku and other short forms, provided you send no more than three poems in total.

4) Preference will be given to unpublished poems. However, some previously-published poems may be included. Poems that have been previously anthologised will not be included - for example, poems that were published in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand will not be included. Please clearly indicate any poems that have been previously published, and give their publication history. Unpublished poems selected for inclusion will be eligible for the Rhysling Awards: see http://www.sfpoetry.com/rhysling.html

5) If you are unsure what speculative poetry is, please see the notes below. If you are still not sure whether your poem fits, please send it anyway, and I'll make up my mind when I read it.

6) After your poem(s), please include a biography of no more than 100 words in the body of your email message. You can also include a link to your blog or website or Amazon author page etc. - whatever link seems best to you, as long as it will continue to be valid at least throughout 2011.

7) Submissions are now open. Please submit your poem(s) by midnight (New Zealand time) on Wednesday 15 June 2011. Any submissions received after I check my email the next morning will not be considered.

8) I will aim to make my selection and respond to all submitters by Wednesday 30 June 2011. However, this response date depends on the volume of submissions received. Please be aware that, due to the limited number of poems to be included, most submitted poems will, unfortunately, have to be rejected.

Payment and rights

9) Accepted poems will be paid for at the following rate: US 3¢/word rounded to nearest dollar, minimum US $3, maximum US $25. Payment is on publication.

10) The Science Fiction Poetry Association normally uses PayPal to pay poets, but can also send cheques. If your poem is accepted, I will get in touch to confirm payment details.

11) "Eye to the Telescope" is an online publication. Therefore, First Electronic Rights (for original poems) or reprint electronic rights are being sought.

Who can submit?

12) Residents of New Zealand and Australia, and citizens of New Zealand and Australia no longer resident in those countries, are eligible to submit. If you do not currently live in New Zealand or Australia, but think that you qualify to submit, please include a note in your email outlining your status and your connection with New Zealand or Australia.

WHAT IS SPECULATIVE POETRY?

Speculative poetry is poetry that falls within the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, plus some related genres such as magic realism, metafiction, and fabulation. It is not easy to give precise definitions, partly because many of these genres are framed in term of fiction rather than poetry.

A good starting point is ""About Science Fiction Poetry" by Suzette Haden Elgin, the founder of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which you can read here:

"The Science Fiction Poetry Association was founded in 1978 to bring together poets and readers interested in science fiction poetry. What is sf poetry? You know what they say about definitions—everybody has one. To be sure, it is poetry (we'll leave that definition to you), but it's poetry with some element of speculation—usually science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Some folks include surrealism, some straight science."

See the SFPA site for lots more information - and please consider joining.

WHO IS TIM JONES?

Tim Jones is a poet and author of both science fiction and literary fiction who was awarded the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. He lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Among his recent books are fantasy novel Anarya’s Secret (RedBrick, 2007), short story collection Transported (Vintage, 2008), and poetry anthology Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (Interactive Press, 2009), co-edited with Mark Pirie. Voyagers won the “Best Collected Work” category in the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Tim's third poetry collection, Men Briefly Explained, will be published by Interactive Press of Brisbane in late 2011.

I'm looking forward to spending two hours at the Ballroom Cafe in Newtown on Sunday from 4-6pm (cnr Riddiford St and Adelaide Rd). Madeleine Slavick is the guest poet, and she'll be performing a series of portraits of New Zealand poets. There will also be open mike poets - the open mike is of a high standard at the Ballroom - and musician Fraser Ross.

I'm looking forward to these two hours because I like Madeleine, like her poetry, and think this will be an intriguing session. I'm also looking forward to it because it will be two hours away from what has been an incredibly busy life of late: lots of travel, lots of interesting experiences, lots of preparation for important things coming up later in the year, lots and lots of answering emails, but alas, far too little writing, or even submitting what I have written.

I'm hoping things will settle down for the next month or so. I'm planning to get more writing done, and once that's underway, I hope I'll get back into the swing of commenting on blogs etc. I even have some new author interviews for this blog lined up - when I find time to write the questions!

So, if I seem a little absent, in either the mental of the physical sense, that's why. For two hours on Sunday, I plan to be present.

05 May 2011

And the whole thing couldn't have gone better. The weather was fine and warm - I was wishing I had packed shorts and jandals, not long-sleeved shirts and jackets. The Festival organisers, and behind them the Dan Davin Literary Foundation and the Invercargill Licensing Trust, do a great job of looking after both presenters and participants, none more so than event organiser Rebecca Amundsen, backed up by Foundation chair Hamesh Wyatt and the helpful & friendly Invercargill Public Library staff.

Arriving just before lunch, I spent Friday afternoon walking the same paths I used to take as a child forty years ago, until the heat of the sun got too much for me and I retreated indoors for wi-fi and poetry preparation.

The crowd was small, due to a triple threat of competing attractions, none of which had been scheduled when the workshop schedule was planned: the Royal Wedding, the Highlanders vs Blues game, and the Breakers' deciding final against the Taipans. But the audience appeared to enjoy it, just as I enjoyed hearing all the poets and taking a good number of my own Southland poems for a spin. Afterwards, we headed out to Waxy's for a highly entertaining dinner.

On Saturday the 30th, I ran a workshop called "Writing Different Worlds" with twenty participants, including Kay and Joanna, which covered the range of speculative fiction: science fiction, fantasy, horror, and those more elusive beasts such as fabulation, magical realism and metafiction. One participant came up with a great example of metafiction (fiction about fiction) as her response to a writing exercise. Participants ranged in age from 14 to a considerable number of multiples of 14.

Two things struck me about this workshop. The first was the talent and enthusiasm of the writers present, which shone through in the results of the two writing exercises I set and also in the many questions and comments that people made. Most people got the chance to read out the work they had done during the exercises. The overall quality of work was high, but even better, I twice had one of those intake-of-breath moments when, within a few sentences of hearing new work by a writer I'd never met before, I realised that they were - or had the potential to be - really, really good. That doesn't happen often, and it's a great feeling when it does.

The second thing was the sense of isolation many of the writers expressed. I remember feeling isolated when I lived in Dunedin and was just starting to take writing seriously; in Invercargill, three hours' further down the line, the feeling of being cut off from the "main centres" of New Zealand writing activity is even stronger. The Festival plays a valuable part in countering this tyranny of distance, but there is room for a lot more to be done.

Full many a rose is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air

... or so said Thomas Gray. There are roses indeed blooming in Southland; it would be a great pity if their sweetness went to waste.

Kay McKenzie Cooke and Joanna Preston have both blogged about the good time they had at the weekend (it was a pity I couldn't stay for Joanna's workshop: despite all the mischief she had threatened, she was an exemplary participant in mine!)